When I wrote The Virgin Suicides, I gave myself very strict rules about the narrative voice: the boys would only be able to report what they had seen or found or what had been told to them.

In the end, it wasn't death that surprised her but the stubbornness of life.

She was a large, disordered woman, like a child's drawing that didn't stay within the lines.

it's amazing what you can get used to.

I'm hopefully making the reader feel a lot about the characters and then about their own life.

The seeds of death get lost in the mess that God made us.

Children learn to speak Male or Female the way they learn to speak English or French.